The agreement, which was signed prior to the opening of the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, France, establishes a formal plan for Teledyne Brown and Aerojet, a GenCorp company, to cooperate in the development and production of propulsion systems for launch and in-space applications.

"This alliance is exciting," Geveden said of the plan that was announced this month. "It is a perfect blend of Teledyne Brown's deep capabilities in space flight systems design and precision manufacturing and Aerojet's exceptional capabilities in propulsion systems development for space and launch systems.

"This offers interesting alternatives for our customers."

Geveden said the Huntsville-Madison County area has also been well-represented at the annual event which draws aerospace businesses and officials from around the world.

He said there was a cruise on the River Seine with his company and other aerospace companies and competitors Saturday.

Also, Madison County hosted a reception Sunday night for Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions at the Eiffel Tower that included Madison County Commission Chairman Mike Gillespie and Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, as well as Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi.

"All the significant players in aerospace were there," Geveden said. "It was a tremendous opportunity for networking."

The team has identified NASA's new Space Launch System heavy-lift launch vehicle and the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles as the alliance customers that would benefit greatly from lower-cost high-quality rocket engines. The move also has the potential of creating several hundred jobs here, it was announced this month.

The two companies can provide liquid hydrogen, kerosene and solid rocket propulsion systems and subsystems. Aerojet is one of only a few domestic sources of large rocket propulsion and Teledyne provides advanced engineering and manufacturing of high precision space systems and hardware.

The complementary skill sets of the two companies offer many options to lower engineering costs while improving quality and performance of these systems, Geveden said.

"This alliance will enable us to offer our customers a new paradigm by bringing together the complementary skills of Teledyne Brown's space flight systems and precision manufacturing with Aerojet's demonstrated capabilities in the design, manufacture and test of liquid and solid propulsion systems, to achieve an optimum combination of superior technical performance and affordability." said Aerojet President/CEO Scott Seymour.

Geveden said he was confident that "we're going to end up manufacturing liquid fuel engines in Huntsville."